Hello from China!

Hey all, a hello from Beijing. Echo and I are sitting in an internet
cafe checking our e-mails. It's certainly not a smoke free enviroment
hahaha! In fact the whole country seems smokey at the moment. I think
the air quality is slightly better today and the sun is out, but there
is sort of a constant small grit storm going on here as the entire
region is under heavy construction due to the upcoming Olympics.

So far we've had a good trip, one bag was lost in JKF and was delivered
yesterday, but dealing with the banks here would drive most Americans
crazy! yesterday we opened a bank account so we could deposite and
change the money to RMB, the official Chinese currency, but the teller
screwed up and put the money in the account, but didn't convert it. So
thgis entire debackle took 5 hours of waiting in one line and then the
next, they counted, recounted and recounted the same fucking money by
habd, by machine, by another spectrum machine god knows how many times.

We were exhausted by the end of the day. The jet lag hit us pretty hard
last night--big difference, 12 hours. The place we have is cool, we are
staying at the international Students Dorm at the University of
technology, where the farther of Summer , Echo's highschool friend
works.

So far no sickness, the food is good, you just can't drink the water
and be smart, washing our hnds a lot. What a country of contrats, rich,
poor and changing fast. My Chinese is coming along slowly, I was able
to order breakfast, though I'm sure I sounded like a retard. So far I
have seen just one other non asisan person in 3 days.

We are going to The Summer Palace today. Tomorrow taking a tour,
Forbidden city, and some other places. Been snapping lots of picks and
walking my ass off! This is still a country where you walk A LOT! Lots
of bike, motor bikes and peddle driven conveyences of every type.

Well that's it for now, zai jian!

Mike